R/mylittlepony
r/mylittlepony, technically /r/mylittlepony, is a community of Friendship is Magic fans on the website reddit. As of May 2013, it has about 58,000 subscribers and hundreds of logged-on users at any time, making it the biggest animation-themed subreddit and the 46th most active reddit community according to stattit. A PBS report on reddit as a whole briefly mentions r/mylittlepony. Submissions The site distinguishes between link submissions and text posts (also called "self-posts"); the former are links to videos or images related to MLP, the latter are questions or opinion pieces. In both cases, users can leave comments and approve or disapprove of a submission; the higher its approval, the more prominently it will be displayed. Users receive "karma" in the form of points for well-received submissions and comments. Self-posts do not generate karma, which is sometimes circumvented by placing one's question or opinion into an image which is then uploaded as a link submission. The two ponies pictured in the logo at the top are Karma and Discentia, two OCs representing upvotes and downvotes, respectively; a third pony with gray hair, representing "meh", is sometimes called Apathia. Emotes and flair A unique aspect of r/mylittlepony and related subreddits is its use of images used in place of plain emoticons. These "emotes" feature all of the main characters and a number of other characters from the show displaying a variety of expressions. They can be used to illustrate text in a comment, but they are also frequently used on their own, without accompanying text. "Secret" text is often inserted into the code; it displays on mouse-over. There are a number of browser extensions and userscripts which display the alt text by default and which make using the emotes easier in general. A total of 124 emotes is available as of the update of April 25, 2012, plus a number of "secret" ones which are not part of the official emote list. Additionally, every user can decide to display a "flair" image next to his or her username. These flairs are based on cutie marks from the show. As of mid-February 2012, there are over 40 such flairs available, plus three "blank flank" flairs in the coat color of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and at least one special flair for the subreddit moderators. Flair used to be awarded by moderators to users who won contests or stood out by virtue of their submissions, but has been freely available to every user since September 8, 2011. A reddit software change two months later made it possible for every user to select their own flair without having to ask the moderators first. Novelty accounts Because reddit has no limit on how many accounts the same person can register, there are a number of novelty or gimmick accounts. Some perform a useful function and tend to be operated as bots, scanning the subreddit and posting when they need to. Two examples for such bots exclusive to the subreddit are Source_Trixie (which attempts to find the original source to an image if the submission is ambiguous about that) and Searchbar_Trixie (which leaves a comment when an image or video has already been submitted before). They replaced two similar bots in early February 2012 when the original operator left the subreddit. A separate group of novelty accounts use the subreddit for a sort of mild role-playing. Users register the name of a main character from the show, preceded by a fitting adjective. They attempt to stay in-character and don't usually use the emotes provided by the subreddit, linking instead to higher-resolution vectors of their chosen character. Examples include Honest_Applejack and DramaticRarity. Other subreddits There are a number of less popular FiM subreddits, usually targeting specialized audiences: They include: * /r/mlplounge, for discussions unrelated to Friendship is Magic * /r/mlptunes, for music-related submissions * /r/mlpdrawingschool, to request constructive criticism for fans who want to learn how to draw/paint * /r/mylittlehuman, dedicated to images and other content relating to humanized ponies * /r/listofponies, which hosts polls which determine the placeholder names used on the FiM Wiki Trivia * Because reddit has no dedicated spoiler tags but does have a dedicated Not Safe For Work tag, /r/mylittlepony uses NSFW to mark submissions related to upcoming or just-released episodes. Actual NSFW posts are strictly prohibited. While a custom stylesheet automatically transforms NSFW tags into Spoiler tags on the subreddit itself, this does not apply to the rest of reddit, where such submissions still show up as NSFW. * The header image changes periodically, but usually shows one of the reddit OCs. References External links * /r/mylittlepony front page * New submissions to /r/mylittlepony Category:Websites